The same nightmare woke me up this morning. Very unpleasant, but I’m an adult and I know that it is only my subconscious sorting through my day. To be fair, it is a creepy story, whether you believe or not in the paranormal, the existence of souls, or demons, or whatever.
I personally do not.
I think, like my father, that Uncle Phil was suffering from some kind of mental health issue. But it is still chilling to hear him narrate his own path to madness. Knowing about his backstory and disappearance makes it all quite unnerving. In his last recorded moments, he believed in what he was seeing, and that must have been hell.
I spent my day pretty much like yesterday, except I maybe didn't spend as much time with Dad as had been before. Instead, I focus on Uncle Phil’s next entry. It is labelled ‘Oct 24th 1949 - Night’.
Which you can listen to here:
As you can hear, he had spent a lot of time in his room, observing his reflection. It reminds me of Narcissus who, in Greek mythology, died by a pool, gazing at his own reflection that he had fallen in love with. In his last moments, he had no concern about anything around him nor did he eat or sleep.
It is very similar to Uncle Phil’s description of his day. Except that he is fascinated by the behaviour of the reflection, and rather scared and disgusted by its appearance. He notices that as he, himself, is fascinated by the thing in the mirror, it is too “beginning to hold a morbid fascination” towards him.
Through his captivation, he secluded himself. He sounds tired - physically and mentally - and on edge, but doesn’t listen to Aunt Constance who told him to rest. I imagine her, worried about the strange behaviour her husband was displaying, trying to get him out of the bedroom, hearing him through the closed door, talking to his recording device, but not to her.
Uncle Phil says that he can’t seem to stay away from the mirror for too long. He mentions wanting to confide in his wife, but knows that he would sound mad. At least, he was aware of it. I know he was not the nicest of men, but I cannot help feeling sorry for the fellow. He is losing his senses and has decided to go through it alone.
I wonder where he went, when he left. And how come he was never found. You’d assume a rich white man in the late forties would have been searched for by many people. And him being out of his wits, confused and disoriented, it shouldn’t have been that hard to find a trace of him, even if he hadn’t wanted to be found…
While I make my comments on my dictaphone and start the conversion to mp4, I start gazing around the desk. Granddad’s journal which I have already flipped through, the folder with Dad’s notes which pretty much gives no more details from what he’s been telling me, and the news clippings that I set on the side to read next. Then I turn my eyes to the rags with their foul mouldy odour and the two large mirror shards. I don’t know why, but these two items, the rags and the mirror pieces, give me the creeps.
They draw my attention, as if I am missing something. I expect that the shards come from the mirror in the recordings, that it probably got broken when it got brought up to the attic.
I read through the news clippings. They basically cover the disappearance of Philip Westerly from his estate on October 31st 1949. His bedroom is described in length - the unmade bed, the broken mirror - as well as his frame of mind the few days prior, from the witness accounts given by one of the maids, Anna, and his valet, Peter. Another article relates the pleas of Constance Westerly, as well as their two children's, for his safe return and to contact the local police station with any information about his whereabouts.
A later article even mentions that the police suspected Aunt Constance of foul play, seeing that Philip Westerly had the reputation of being a mean and cruel man and that she might have wanted to get rid of him and his abuse, and get to inherit his riches. But the theory was quickly dropped, when she released the reels to the police, absolving herself and the staff.
The last news article talks about how Constance claims he never left the room, that there is something peculiar about the mirror, and she is convinced something unexplainable has happened to him. She even calls for the services of exorcists and other paranormal professionals. I assume that amounted to nothing.
That unfortunately gained her the reputation of a desperate woman who was losing her mind over the tragic disappearance of her husband, who most likely abandoned his family. What a deplorable thing it must have been for the family to go through, on top of worrying about their husband and father.
Next instalment 25th October
The Westerly Tapes is a Halloween Horror by Julia Mersobian and Nathan Schulz, for The Drama Merchant, based on the short story by Paul Compton. The voice of Westerly is performed by Kent Lee
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